


let down your hair

by ThisJoyAndI



Series: SansaWillasWeek2015 [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Rapunzel (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rapunzel Fusion, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Kidnapping, Petyr Baelish being Petyr Baelish, SansaWillasWeek - Day Three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 05:05:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4508898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisJoyAndI/pseuds/ThisJoyAndI
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(so that i may climb) <br/>Petyr has confined Sansa to her tower for eighteen years, but the arrival of a stranger changes everything. ’She knows he cannot see her, for she is too far up for anyone to see, but the thought of someone other than Petyr knowing that she is here, knowing that she exists, both thrills and terrifies her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let down your hair

Sansa’s auburn hair has long since reached the floor, but Petyr still refuses to let her leave the tower. It’s for her own safety, he tells her, and it’s a lie she once believed, but one she finds hard to stomach now that she’s older.

Her hair continues to grow, she continues to age, and Petyr continues to order her to remain in the tower. It’s an order she has no choice but to obey, for where could she go, even if she managed to escape? She has no knowledge of her family, no idea where precisely she is, and no way of earning a living.

So she remains in the tower, living out her days with repetitive monotony. She sews, she cooks, she cleans, she reads, and Petyr often leaves her to her own pursuits, leaving the tower to go and conduct business. Sansa knows better than to ask if she could accompany him, for the first and only time she’s ever asked for such a favour Petyr berated her for almost an hour on the perils and dangers of the outside world. Instead, she takes what small comfort she can get from his absence, for Petyr, the one person she has ever known, has begun to look at her in a strange manner. She might be alone, high up in her tower, but she isn’t stupid, and whenever Petyr is home she makes sure to wedge a chair underneath her doorknob.

One bright morning Petyr leaves the tower for the third time that month, Sansa’s hair carrying him to the ground. She often thinks about smuggling a knife upon her person and letting Petyr descend halfway down the tower courtesy of her hair, before cutting her locks with the knife, Petyr presumably plummeting to his death and Sansa free for the first time in eighteen years. But all of the knives in the tower are blunt, and even if she were to find a way to cut her hair, Petyr would most likely survive the fall and punish her for her insolence.

So she simply unwinds her hair down the side of the tower, the sun high in the sky, and stifle her complaints as Petyr descends, tugging rather harshly on her hair. He’s never been very gentle, never thanked her for letting him use her hair, and it’s yet another one of his traits that has begun to annoy her immensely. But she remains silent, sitting by the window, hair streaming down the side of the tower, and watching until Petyr is too far away to see, his dark head merely a dot in the distance.

She knows Petyr is not her father, for she shares none of his dark looks, her skin pale and dotted with freckles where his is swarthy, her hair auburn where his is dark, her eyes blue as the sky where his are as grey as the storm clouds that often appear above her tower. Petyr is not her father, but he is the only person she has ever known, and he seems to take some delight in that.

Why else would he prevent her from leaving the tower and exploring the world herself? He goes out into the world frequently enough, so it cannot be as dangerous as he tells her it is.

All she wants to do is see the world instead of read about it, but she fears Petyr’s wrath too much to leave.

So she sits and she waits, for in three days Petyr shall be back and she shall have to be on her very best behaviour.

\---

By her reasoning and measurement of time, only two days have passed when a small dot appears on the horizon, growing bigger as it nears her tower. She dismisses the dot as being Petyr coming home earlier than expected and so she returns to her mending, for he shall soon call for her to let down her hair so he can ascend and she wants to finish repairing this tear before he does.

But instead of Petyr’s yell, Sansa hears a strange sound, something rather like a whine, and she drops her mending to rush to the window and peer down below.

What she sees is a surprising sight.

She knows the animal below to be a horse, knowledge which has been gained from her books, but she isn’t too sure about the person perched on top of the horse. He has dark hair rather like Petyr’s, but he isn’t Petyr, and the notion perplexes her.

So she sits at her window and watches the man descend from his horse, watches as he withdraws a cane  and grips it tightly in a hand, peering up at her tower. She knows he cannot see her, for she is too far up for anyone to see, but the thought of someone other than Petyr knowing that she is here, knowing that she exists, both thrills and terrifies her.

“Hello!” the man shouts, and she inhales sharply at the sound.

But she does not reply, and so the man shouts up three more times, squinting as he peers up at where she sits.

Who is this man? Why has he come here? Better yet, how has he discovered her tower, when she has never seen another person aside from Petyr in her entire eighteen years?

In the end, curiosity gets the better of her, and Sansa leans forward, her hair trailing behind her, her head now entirely exposed to the man’s gaze. She cannot see his expression, not entirely, but she thinks his eyes widen at the sight of her, and something stirs in her stomach at the thought.

“Hello,” she says. And then, because it is something she has said every month for nearly ten years, and because she honestly does not know what to say aside from this, she asks, “Would you like to come up?”

She doesn’t know who this man is, but she has lived eighteen years with only Petyr for company, and no man could be worse than he is. And besides, she has enough in her tower to defend herself if the need arises.

She doesn’t think it will.

The man nods, and so she drapes the hair nearest her onto a hook and pushes some out of the window, the rest of her auburn locks following behind quickly, aided by gravity. The man takes longer than Petyr usually does to ascend her tower, his horse chewing a patch of grass as he climbs. But he does not hold her hair extremely tightly like Petyr does, nor does he complain up to her about his latest business associates and their idiocy, expecting her to care about what he does when he will not allow her to leave her tower.

And when he finally makes it to the top of the tower, he smiles at her, taking her proffered hand and climbing through the window. She smiles too, both in response to his smile and at the presence of another person in her tower, and decides that the polite thing to do would be to offer the man a drink, especially after his strenuous climb.

But the man, it seems, has other ideas, for no matter how out of breath he may be, when she turns to go and pour him a drink, he catches her by the forearm, spinning her back around. “You look exactly like her,” he breathes out, releasing her forearm and looking at her hair, her eyes, her nose, her smile.

_Exactly like who?_

She must voice this thought instead of simply thinking it, because the man says, “Like the Queen. You look exactly like the Queen.”

_The Queen?_

Sansa’s confusion must be readily evident on her face, because the man laughs, shaking his head and offering his hand for her to shake. She takes it shakily, her handshake surely limp.

“I’m Willas,” he tells her, “Willas Tyrell. I’ve been looking for you for the last five years, at the request of your parents, the King and Queen.” He smiles at her, and adds, “They’ve been looking for you ever since you were stolen in the night eighteen years ago.”

_Stolen?_ She’s always known that Petyr isn’t her father, but the fact that he had stolen her from her family, from her parents, when she was only just a baby, and then raised her to happily obey his every request, raised her to live alone up in her tower, when she had a whole family searching for her, is more than infuriating.

Sansa is a princess, if what this Willas says it true, and Petyr thinks to control her.

But by the time he comes back, she shall be gone from her tower, free and happy at last, for she fingers a piece of her hair, looks at Willas and says, “I presume you can take me to my family.”

When Willas nods, a smile spreads across her lips, and she makes her wayto the trapdoor of the tower, under which are a set of stairs that Petyr never bothered to take, asking Willas as she bends to open the trapdoor, “Do you happen to have a knife on you? It’s just, it’s been eighteen years since my last haircut,” Sansa says, motioning to the immense length of hair trailing behind her as she moves, the auburn locks dragging across the floor.

She continues, “You say my parents are the King and Queen, so that means I am a princess, and I may not know much of the outside world, but I definitely know that princesses do not have metres and metres worth of hair.”

Willas laughs once more, a sound that is almost as sweet as the chirping birds which have entertained her for so long, and unsheathes a knife from his belt. He steps closer to her, and gathers up her hair at the small of her back. “I’m no professional, but I shall try my best,” he promises her, and she smiles at him over her shoulder, the strange fluttering feeling reappearing in the depths of her stomach as he cuts off the hair that has defined her life for so long.

Moments later when they ride away from her tower on the back of Willas’ horse, her hair now rests somewhere just below her shoulder blades, loose and free to fly in the wind.

She grins into Willas’ back at the thought of how displeased Petyr shall be when he discovers her gone, and grins at him once more when her parents’ arms enclose around her for the first time in eighteen years, three brothers and one sister ( _Robb, Bran, Rickon and Arya_ , she must remember these names) waiting eagerly to also reunite with her, her mother cursing Petyr over and over again as she holds her.

Sansa’s hair shall never grow past the small of her back again, because she is free, both of the tower and of Petyr, free and a princess, free and finally able to choose her own destiny.

**Author's Note:**

> Halfway through SWW2015 and there's been so many GREAT works, I'm so happy! 
> 
> Hopefully everyone likes this little Rapunzel AU :)


End file.
